Search Engine Optimization Expert

About Me

I currently work for a company called Consultants in Design and have worked with many high profile clients, including The Wallace Collection, Bulgari and Vicarage Gate.

I taught myself web design and programming whilst studying Law in order to build the first student price comparison site. I then began work for Parallel Media Group where I worked as a User Interface designer, User Experience Designer and Graphic Designer. I left in order to build my own mobile app service NightInc, which allows users to compare offers from nightclubs up and down the country.

Throughout my employment I have continued to work freelance on evenings and weekends in order to widen my portfolio, improve my skills and keep up with the latest technologies.

I would describe myself as an entrepreneur, having started 3 different companies of my own. I am a fast learner and am always
looking to push the boundaries when it comes to digital design and development.

Skills

UI Design

UX Design

HTML

CSS

HTML5

CSS3

Mobile Web Design

jQuery

Javascript

SEO

Social Media

AJAX

PHP

MYSQL

Phonegap

nightinc.com

NightInc is an app that allows users to see exactly what is happening at each club. Users can view promotions and flyers, access each clubs website, facebook and twitter profiles, find each club on a map and join guestlists and buy tickets. This is possibly the most difficult tasks that I have faced. As well as designing the invite system and allowing users to sign up to the service, I also had to build a custom content management system so that clubs could upload their nights. As well as that, I had to display all of this information in a native app that accessed an online database.

studentvalue.co.uk

Studentvalue was the first project that I worked on. My aim was simple: to provide a price comparison site exclusively for students.

The idea was to make it easier for students to prepare for University and to save money. The problem was getting content. I signed up to affiliate websites so that I could use datafeeds from retailers wishing to target students. I succesfuly struck up relationships with retailers such as SKY, Orange, O2, PC world and many more.

Once I had the content in place, I had to display it, which I did using a combination of PHP and MySQL.

Studentvalue is a project that is currently on the back-burner and something I would wish to pick up again later down the line, but right now it just takes up too much time to maintain the database, although the website still receives regular traffic.

jadeseabrook.com

When Jade Seabrook first approached me she was studying performing arts at Masters College. She wanted a website that listed her teaching qualifications and showcased her skills in order to find work upon graduating.

Jade told me that she had recently done some modelling work and wanted the site to focus on her photoshoots so that she could find more work along these lines. She wanted a professional design, did some research and came across the IMG modelling website.

IMG are one of the top modelling agencies in the world and their website is striking. Jade asked me to come up with something similar to their website in order to come across as a professional model.

The first problem that I faced was that the IMG website was built using flash, and I hate flash. The problem with flash is that it is not compatible with iPad's and iPhones and a lot of the judges at auditions would use their iPads or iPhones to check out each performers website whilst they were auditioning.

Flash is a problem for all different types of businesses. I find an important part of web design is accessibility and my goal is to ensure that each site I build is accessible on all devices in order to maximise business.

shareefaj.com

I was recommended to Shareefa by Jade Seabrook, a former client of mine. Shareefa, like Jade, wanted to show off her modelling potential, and provided me with such striking images that I thought the best thing to do would be to build her a website that has a background slideshow, so that these large images would really have an impact on her visitors.

I am currently adding to this site and changing some of the fonts and positioning in order to make it more visually appealing. I'm also looking to move her over to Wordpress so that she can maintain her site herself.

nickydeboo.com

Nicky Deboo this year graduated from Masters College, a well known performing arts college based in Essex. He wanted his website to look clean and simple, showing off both his modelling and dancing portfolio.

As Nicky provided me with many good quality photos, I was able to use one of his headshots for his background. I decreased the opacity of the image in order to get the white-like clinical effect that Nicky was after.

The main problem that we faced was making sure that the background scaled properly across a range of devices. An important part of web design is accessibility, and I wanted to ensure that Nicky's website was accessible on every device.

I like to make sure that the homepages I design are never static, and with Nicky being a model, I decided to add a jquery slideshow in order to exhibit his portfolio.

As Nicky's main area of expertise is dance, he wanted a high quality video page, showcasing his dancing. I therefore decided to use a Lightbox effect video player, with a nice bit of css coded in, in order to give the nice hover over effect when the visitor scrolls over each video.

coddenhamcottage.com

Mark and Sandra approached me with the aim of increasing the number of visitors to their cottage. They had advertised their cottage in a couple of well known internet directories but due to limits on the number of photos that you could provide and the competition that they were placed with, they struggled to get a lot of custom.

They wanted their own online presence, a professional and minimalist website that reflexted the simplicity of the cottage they were advertising.

An important part of web design is clarity. With coddenhamcottage.com, I wanted to illustrate the beauty of the cottage, so gave it a dynamic background that changes when the user navigates through the site.

greenerskyproductions.com

Greener Sky Productions is a Multi-Media Film Production company that wanted a sleek and professional looking website in order to showcase their work.

The client wanted to be able to upload their content from Vimeo and YouTube themselves, so the main challenge with this site was putting a custom Content Management System into place. Their backend system now allows Greener Sky Productions to upload their own text, images and video, all using PHP and MySQL.

Often the minimalist look is a good approach when it comes to web design projects, and it proved to be the case here. The client wanted something elegant so I chose to use a lot of white open space with grey text and injections of green. The logo they originally provided was black, so I had to use some photoshop magic to turn it grey and green in order to keep the site looking uniform, as it was evident that as the company is called Greener Sky Productions, it should have some green in it.

Greener Sky are going to be constantly working on new projects and wanting to add prominence to their newest material, so it was important for the client to have an image gallery that featured heavily on the front page, allowing the visitor to see what they have been up to.

nerja-apartment.com

shfitness.co.uk

SH Fitness is a company based in Bushey that provide personal training services across London and Hertfordshire.

The client needed a logo designed and gave me a rough drawing of how he wished the logo to look. I then designed his logo and upon his approval began to use it as the basis for the web design project.

When it comes to web design projects, often the colours of the site should be determined by the logo. I therefore decided to use the same blue but went for a dark background as he informed me that his staffs uniform would be black.

Using black as the background for a website can often be too severe, so in this case I decided to go for a dark grey instead. The main challenge with this was allowing the triangles at the header and footer to be fluid layouts, so that the site would not look strange when viewed on a large screen such as a Mac.

I wanted to use as much imagery as I could on the site, so decided to include an image scroller on the homepage so that he could summarise his services in a more visual way, rather than having a text heavy site that hardly anyone has the patience to read.

fitnesscoaching.me.uk

Andrew Murphy approached us in order to try and expand his personal training business. His aim was to advertise his services to the people of Watford.

Andrew did some research and came to us with a couple of examples of what he wanted.

In web design it is important to make sure that web pages appear dynamic. We tried to make Andrews site as interactive as possible, using a jquery slider at the top of the page to promote his services and give an impression of professionalism.

Timefortraining.co.uk

Time For Training is a Fitness company based in Essex. They recently opened up their own studio and needed a place online to advertise their services so that they could start getting customers through the door as soon as possible. They wanted a heavily branded website and supplied us with only their logo.

Branding is a massive part of web design. There's no point designing a blue site if the logo is red. I used photoshop in order to extract the colour red from the logo and then used the exact colour in order to accent the site. The result is a site that is uniform throughout and enforces Time For Training's brand identity.

Time For Training wanted a way to keep their customers up to date with their latest offers. Realising that they relied heavily on social media, we decided to add a twitter plugin in order to display the companies latest tweets and offers on their homepage.